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UNCOLNHALL 

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 




DEDICATED TO THE STUDY OF 
THE HUMANITIES 



I am rao^ thankful if my labors have seemed 
to conduct to the preservation of those insti* 
tutions under which alone we can expect 
good, governmentc^and in its train , sound 
learning and the progress of the liberal arts. 

A.Lincoln. 



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LINCOLN HALL 

The University of Illinois dates its origin from the federal land 
grant adt of 1 862. It is the largest and most important of the many 
institutions which were the outgrowth of this significant law. 

Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States signed this bill. 
He had already used his influence as a politician and statesman to 
secure its passage, having committed himself years before to the ad- 
vocacy of a system of ^ate universities based on federal land grants. 

In a sense, therefore, he may be considered as one of the founders 
of this institution, since his influence and his official adts made its 
organization possible. 

At the session of the legislature of Illinois beginning in January 
1909, the hundredth anniversary of the year of Lincoln's birth, the 
sum of two hundred fifty thousand dollars was appropriated to the 
University of Illinois for the erecftion of a hall to be dedicated to the 
ftudy of the humanities. 

It was decided to make this building a memorial to Abraham Lin- 
coln, the fir^ citizen of this ^ate to be eledted President of the United 
States, the signer of the bill which made the ^ate university possible, 
and the consi^ent and persevering friend of higher education in ^ate 
and nation. 

After long and careful consideration of the needs of the University, 
and the possibilities of a memorial building, it was decided to call the 
building Lincoln Hall, and to carry out in its scheme of decoration 
a series of memorial panels, tablets, .medallions, inscriptions, etc., 
relating to Lincoln and his times, so that ^udents and professors at 
work in this building, or even passing along the walks about it, should 
be in daily and hourly remembrance of what this man and his co- 
workers did for the American people. 

Over the main entrance is the inscription, Lincoln Hall. Just 
within the memorial entrance hall and sunk in the marble floor is a 
copy of the address of Lincoln at Gettysburg in brass letters; while 



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MAIN ENTRANCE 




MEMORIAL ENTRANCE HALL 



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at the back, facing the visitor on his entrance, is the grand marble 
ftairway, in a recess of which is the niche for a ^atue of the great 
emancipator. 

On the outside across the front of the building and above the 
second ^ory windows is a series of ten panels in terra cotta, repre- 
senting scenes in the life of Lincoln, from his activity as a rail splitter 
to the re-e^ablishment of peace at the close of the civil war. 

In a similar position on the two wings is a series of inscriptions 
containing quotations from Lincoln's speeches and writings flanked 
by medallion portraits in terra cotta of men prominent in ftate and 
national life who were closely associated with Lincoln in his work: 
Seward, Chase, Stanton, Welles, Grant, Farragut, Sumner, Adams, 
Greeley, Turner, Douglas, Trumbull, Yates, Oglesby, Logan, Lovejoy, 
Davis, Palmer, Koerner and Medill. 

The whole makes a unique and successful attempt to use exterior 
decoration in terra cotta to emphasize the beauty and the dignity of a 
memorial building. 

The evident interest of ^udents and visitors alike in these decora- 
tions (for there is seldom a time when young men and women are not 
to be seen ^udying these inscriptions and panels) proves plainly enough 
that the hope of the architedt was fully ju^ified, that these elements 
would prove a valuable source of inspiration and knowledge to the 
successive generations of ^udents. 

Taken all in all, Lincoln Hall is one of the noble^ monuments 
thus far eredted in this country to our martyred president. 

It is equally unique and successful as an academic building. The 
ftruAure is four Tories in height, and 230 feet in length, with two 
wings running back 1 27 feet. It is devoted to the ^udy of the humani- 
ties: classical and modern languages and literature, hiftory, philo- 
sophy, and the social sciences. 

The building might properly enough be described as a laboratory 
for the intelledtual sciences, similar to the conventional laboratories 
for the natural sciences such as physics and chemi^ry. 

Here we have, for example, in one room or series of rooms, the 
materials necessary for an accurate and comprehensive ^udy of his- 
tory, ^ate and national: books, documents, maps, letters, news- 
papers, manuscripts, portraits, photographs, slides, all within reach 
of the ^udent himself; for access is freely granted to the shelves and 
drawers and the rooms are open from eight o'clock in the morning until 



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ENGLISH SEMINARY 




HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE SEMINARY 



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ten in the evening. Here are to be found at all hours of the day, 
and until ten o'clock at night, students and professors working at the 
same tables, using the same materials, drawing guidance, inspiration 
and intere^ from one another. 

In adjacent rooms are to be found the materials for the laboratory 
itudy of the English language and literature: texts, commentaries, 
original manuscripts and prints, busts, portraits, and the other auxil- 
iary aids to in^rudtion such as maps, slides, lantern projedtions, phono- 
graphs for the accurate ftudy of sounds, etc. 

In the two museums located in the same building, that for classical 
archaeology and that for the iludy of European civilization, are 
additional materials valuable for the under^anding and the elucida- 
tion of our life and times, such as ^atues, paintings, models, ca^s, 
and vases. 

Similar facilities are provided for the ^udy of other languages, 
modern as well as ancient: German, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin 
and Greek; for the social sciences, political economy, political science, 
and sociology; and for logic, psychology and philosophy. 

The eredlion and equipment of this building opens a new era in the 
hi^ory of higher education in the ^ate of Illinois. It has a meaning 
for every grade of education from the university to the elementary 
school. Here will be educated and trained to an increasing extent, 
the teachers in the high schools of the ^ate. These schools now number 
over five hundred. In a few years they will number a thousand; and 
in them the boys and girls of the ^ate will get all the school training 
which most of them will ever be able to obtain. In these high schools 
also will be largely trained the teachers for the elementary schools. 
And they in turn will derive inspiration and help from all these sources 
which the university offers through the superior equipment and train- 
ing of the teachers who have enjoyed these facilities. 

No teacher trained in these surroundings can fail to get a touch 
of real inspiration which will in turn readl upon his pupils, and thus in 
ever widening circles, reach the rank and file of the people of the ^ate 
and lift them to ever higher levels of thought and feeling and adlion. 

Those young people also who ^udy here but who do not afterwards 
go into teaching, themselves, but enter law, medicine, farming, the 
miniftry, and housekeeping, will bless and help the communities in 
which they will live and work because of the uplift which they will 
have gained in these places. 



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It must not be forgotten that the facilities thus provided by the 
ftate are not primarily or fundamentally for the benefit of the young 
people who dire<5tly take advantage of them, but rather for the ultimate 
benefit of the great masses of the people who cannot come up to the 
university and who for their participation in the benefits of these great 
opportunities provided by the commonwealth, must depend upon the 
good faith and the loyalty of those privileged to ftudy here, in trans- 
mitting the blessings they have enjoyed to the communities whose 
interests they will serve. Noblesse oblige. 

That the great president himself after whom this building is named, 
saw this very clearly, is plain from many of his remarks. He well 
knew that striking the physical shackles from the limbs of the black 
bondman was only the firft, though necessary ^ep, toward that true 
emancipation which comes only when ignorance and superstition have 
been overcome by enlightenment and reason. That he full well appre- 
ciated the importance of higher education to the community, even 
to those who could not obtain it for themselves in person, is evident 
from the following quotation taken from a letter written to Dr. John 
Maclean, President of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton Uni- 
versity) December 27, 1864, after Lincoln had been notified that the 
trustees of that in^itution had conferred upon him the degree of Doctor 
of Laws: 

"I am most thankful if my labors have seemed to conduct to the 
preservation of those institutions under which alone we can expedt 
good government — and in its train, sound learning and the progress 
of the liberal arts." 



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GLASS ROOM-DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS 




STUDY AND CLASS ROOM-ROMANCE LANGUAGES 



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THE BUILDING 

The building is of brick and ^one, and terra cotta. The central 
feature of the entire plan is a series of departmental or seminar 
libraries extending across the front of the building, on the fir^, second 
and third floors. Joining each seminar library are one or two con- 
ference rooms intended primarily for graduate ^udents, and avail- 
able for research or conference and for meetings of seminar graduate 
classes. A system of refliedted light has been in^alled throughout the 
building, giving a soft but powerful illumination easy to ^udy by and 
pleasing in its effect. The book capacity of the ^acks in the seminar 
and conference rooms to which ^udents have free access is over sixty 
thousand volumes, and the conilrudtion has been planned so as to 
admit a second ^ory of itacks and a consequent increase in the number 
of books which can be accommodated. 

The class rooms and offices of the various departments are grouped, 
so far as practicable, about these seminar and conference rooms. In 
some cases rooms are used at the same time for private ^udies and 
small class rooms. 

In general, quarters are provided on the fir^ floor for the classics 
and for the philosophical group or department; on the second floor, for 
English and modern languages; and on the third floor, for the social 
science group, comprising history, economics, politics and sociology. 

The fourth floor, which is less convenient for class room purposes, 
is largely set apart for the promotion of certain intere^s now for the 
fir^ time adequately provided for in the literary departments. There 
are, fir^, several rooms provided for research offices. These include, 
for instance, the bureau of municipal research, with the legislative 
and municipal reference libraries, which are being developed in con- 
nedtion with the department of political science; the Journal of English 
and Germanic Philology, which is under the editorial supervision of the 
members of the faculty; and the research in Illinois hiftory, which is 
being carried on by the university department of hi^ory in cooperation 
with the tru^ees of the State Historical Library. 

The north and south wings of the fourth floor are set apart for two 
museums. The museum of classical archaeology and art comprises 



Eleven 



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collections designed to show especially the influence on our American 
life of the fine arts of the Greeks and Romans, particularly sculpture, 
8uid other forms of antiquities, by means of casts, photographs, and 
original articles. The objects thus far acquired include a selection 
from the frieze of the Parthenon, extending around three sides of the 
room, various other Greek and Roman reliefs, about a dozen casts of 
^atues in the round, varying from the archaic to the Helleni^ic 
period, originals and reprodudlions of coins, terra cottas and smaller 
antiquities, a relief model of the Athenian acropolis, parts of the car- 
tonnage of an Egyptian mummy, and a number of interesting speci- 
mens of Egyptian pottery of different periods secured from the Egypt 
Exploration Fund through the generosity of Mr. William G. Hibbard 
of Chicago. The mounted photographs available for exhibition 
number over a thousand, and illu^rate Greek and Roman history, 
antiquities and art. 

The second museum, the museum of Eurppean Culture, which 
occupies the north wing of the building, contains, together with other 
illustrative material, the following collections: 1. A. Models of 
ancient weapons (implements of warfare in the Stone age, medieval 
spears, shields, suits of armor, etc.) B. Early musical instruments. 
C. Runic monuments. 2. Ca^s of Romanesque, Gothic, and early 
renaissance sculpture. 3. Objects of early church and mona^ery art 
(reprodudlions of chalices, custodials, ivory book-bindings, etc.) 
4. Facsimiles in color of medieval miniatures, and reprodudlions of im- 
portant historical documents (the Magna Charta, etc.) 5. Replicas 
of representative medieval seals. 

In locating the building opportunity was left for necessary enlarge- 
ments, and although the building has not yet been placed fully in use, 
the pressure for space is already so great that the building must shortly 
be doubled in capacity. 



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MUSEUM OF CLASSICAL ARCHytOLCCY AND ART 




MUSEUM OF EUROPEAN CULTURE 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



028 346 325 4 



Sla/vcr>r is founded inthc s^liishncss of tnaji$ 
nature-opposition to it in hi;^ love of justice. 

A house dividled against it3elf cannot standi I 
Dclievc thijs government cannot endure berma- 
nent^ half ^lave and half free. 

Let us havefaith that right makes mi^ht 
and in that faith let U5 to the end dare to do 
our duty as we understand it* 

I hold that, in contemplation of univer-sal W 
and of the Constitution, thcUtlion of these 
States is perpetual. 

We are not enemies, tut frlend^S .Wemu^t 
not be enemie;s'. Though pa^syion may- have 
^trained, it must not brealc our bond? of 
affection. 

My paramount object in this struggle is to 
save thelftiion,and1;!5 not either to save or to 
destroy slavery 

In giving freedom to the slave ye assfure 
freedom to the free — honorable alike in 
what we give and what >vc preserve. 

The signis look better. The Father of Waters 
ajfain l<^^s unvexedto the 5ea.Thank3 tothc 
great rJorth west for It. 

That this nation, under God, shall have 
a new birth of freedom; and that ^o\^ 
ernmcnt of the people, by the peoplc,for 
the people shall not perish from the earth. 

With malice toward none; with charity 
for alhwith firrnness in the r^ht, aiS God 
gives us to see the right, let us strive on 
TO finish the work wo^ are in. 

^ From mural inscriptions. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



028 346 325 4 



